Team mentored reflective practice in gerontological social work education

ABSTRACT

Attracting students to gerontological social work has long been difficult. A possible strategy is to provide students with experiential learning opportunities with older adults that provide them with support while reflecting on this work. Our Team Mentored Reflective Practice model represents an effort to enhance students’ reflective practice skills in the context of a clinical research project in which both instructors and students form a supportive team. Students reported a number of benefits that included the development of meaningful relationships with older clients, clinical skills that related to memory loss, and the integration of research and practice. Students who were engaged in the team mentored process of reflection evidenced changes in how they were thinking about clients. These new understandings have the potential to impact the ways in which students work with older adults.

KEYWORDS:

• Mentorship
• self-reflection
• team supervision
• experiential learning
• older couples

Acknowledgments

We wish to thank the 2013–14 Investigating Student Learning (ISL) Program that was funded by the University of Michigan Office of the Provost, the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching, and the Provost’s Learning Analytics Task Force. We also thank the Michigan Institute for Clinical and Health Research (UL1RR024986), and the University of Michigan School of Social Work for their financial support.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University of Michigan Office of the Provost, the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching, and the Provost’s Learning Analytics Task Force [the 2013-14 Investigating Student Learning (ISL) P];